Remote Growl

Remote Growl is an extension to the very handy application Growl.

I wrote this utility for personal use, but since remote notification is such a good idea, maybe you want to use my utility as well. Feel free to do so.

Donate

Paying for Remote Growl is optional. However I very much appreciate donations, which motivates further developement of Remote Growl.

News

20th November 2004

Initial Remote Growl version 1.0 released.

Download

Download here:
http://remotegrowl.erlang.no/RemoteGrowl.zip

Contact

Feel free to contact the developer at mac@solweb.no. I do not have time to give individual support per e-mail, but if you are having trouble, I might write something about the issues in a upcoming version of this manual.

Visit the developers homepage.

Growl Server

The Growl Server is a perl script listening on an UDP socket for incoming growl messages. To make the Growl Server run in the background continously, copy the Growl Server application into your /Applications directory.

Before you start the Growl Server, you need to make sure Growl is installed properly, ad setup a simple config file.

Prerequisites

To make the Growl Server work, you need to install Growl with Perl bindings. Go to the Growl homepage, and download Growl 0.5 and Growl Bindings. Run the installer inside the Growl 0.5 image, and follow the instructions inside the perl directory of bindings. Test to see if your perl bindings and Growl are properly setup. Optionally visit the Growl Preference pane in System Preferences to configure Growl for you needs.

Growl Server Configuration File

To work properly Growl Server needs a very simple configuration file located in your home directory. The file must be named .growlservpassword. The file must contain a password and a port number separated by ":". Here is an example:

dks8ww.xm19sd:9955

The password you provide must be used by your client to send notifications to this server. If the password do not match, the notification will be rejected. The port number must be above 1024 since you cannot run the server as root.

Important: The configuration file MUST NOT end with newline.

Growl Client

Remote Growl also include a command line client written in perl. If you run the client without any parameters, you will have the neccessary information:

[andreas@snow:growl]$ ./growlclient
Usage: 
        --host (-h)             growlserer.yourcompay.com (default is localhost)
        --port (-o)             12345 (default is 9955)
        --password (-p)         sdlkfjdslkfj
        --application (-a)      growlclient
        --types (-t)            error,warning,notice
        --type (-y)             notice
        --header (-e)           "Test message"
        --message (-m)          "Testing 1 2 3"
        --stick (-i)            1

All options is required, except --host and --port, which defaults to localhost and 9955.

The options can be specified at the command line or in a config file, as described in the next section.

The meaning of --host, --port, --password should be obvious. The other options include:

application

This option should be the name of your application which invokes the notification.

types

This option is a commaseparated list of notification types. In example it can be: notice,warning,error,critical. The reason why you should provide a list of different notification types is that the Growl Preference pane will give you the opportunity to setup separate preference for each type.

type

The type should be one of the one in the types list.

header

The header will be displayed in bold on top of the notification message.

message

The message will be displayed below the header

stick

The stick option is boolean and should be either 0 or 1. A sticking notification require the user to click on it to dissappear.

Here is an example of a successfull client command:

[andreas@snow:growl]$ ./growlclient -p 123 -a growlclient \
	--types notice,error -t notice \
	-e "Testing Remote Growl" -m "Juhu" -i 1

Client Configuration File

As you see, the client require alot of options to work. Therefore you can set some of those options in a configuration file instead. The configuration file should be located in the root of your home folder, and be called .growlclientconfig. The syntax of the file is one option per line, with option=value. If an option is provided both on the command line and in the config file, the command line will override the config file.

Here is an example of a config file:

host=localhost
password=123
port=9955
stick=0
application=growlclient
types=growlclient
type=growlclient

Important: The config file MUST end with newline, and should contain no empty lines.

Licence

Remote Growl is released under GNU General Public License.